


(I Could Take You Down With) 2020 BLOWS

by objectlesson



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Brief Mentions of Trauma and Grief, Cuddling, It's 2020 baby, Kissing, M/M, Modern Era, Once and Future King, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28111089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Arthur’s breakdowns are an every-other-day occurrence lately, which Merlin supposes is actually somewhat of an improvement. When hefirstcame back, the cycles between coping and dissolving were far more rapid and chaotic. One moment Arthur would decide the K cup machine was absolutely ingenious and take the whole thing apart in attempts to ensure it wasn’t sorcery, and the next moment he’d unplug Merlin’sentiredesktop computer set up in a fit of tearful overwhelm because it was making “a noise.” Now, his stints of genuine coping last longer. He will spend a full day trying his hardest to puzzle through the world as it exists now, without getting so much as understandably frustrated. However, he’s also been known to stay in bed for hours at a time with noise canceling headphones on while Merlin rubs soothing circles into his back, so. It’s sort of a toss up, what the day will bring, but all things considered, he’s taking the whole mess that is 2020 quite well.OR, Arthur Pendragon rises again in the absolute suckiest year. He’s supposed to save the world but Merlin is just glad he's back.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 107





	(I Could Take You Down With) 2020 BLOWS

**Author's Note:**

> I spend a lot of time each day just idly thinking about how I wish King Arthur would come fix the world, and then giggling at how fucking useless he would be because the world would just truly be unfathomable to someone that old. Like you could kill him with a Dorito. With a 100 gecs song. I think he'd be very fragile. 
> 
> Anyway, that recurring notion coupled with Deheer's very old art of Merlin putting on medieval carols for Arthur spawned this little fic. I could make it longer but I think I'll probably just do a collection of shorter stories in the same universe every time I want to write about like. Arthur's steaming hot takes on tik tok or Taylor Swift or how showers work or whatever.
> 
> I think this fic is mostly funny and cute but I do briefly mention covid 19 and other contemporary issues so if you're looking for pure escapism, be warned.

When Merlin arrives back from the laundromat, Arthur is wrapped up in the weighted blanket like a burrito, and all the curtains are drawn. “I fucking _hate_ 2020,” he gripes, voice muffled from the couch. 

Merlin sets the laundry down by the door very carefully, and tiptoes over. Sometimes, when Arthur is like this, even the sound of Merlin’s doc martens on the linoleum floor of his flat is too much. 

Arthur sits up as he draws nearer though, hair a wreck but the rest of him otherwise in working order. “The _only_ good things about this century are Chipotle bowls and McDonalds cheeseburgers and I cannot actually _eat_ either of those without getting _spectacularly_ ill, so what’s even the point?!” he says before flopping back down pitifully, frowning up at the ceiling. “I hate everything.” 

“I know,” Merlin mumbles, trying his very hardest to sound understanding as he hides a reflexive smile behind his hand. It’s been difficult to summon the proper amount of sympathy for Arthur most of the time he's complaining, because Merlin is just _so_ ecstatic he’s back. He has suffered through centuries of industrialization and war and technology and reality television _just_ to see Arthur again. To hold him, to smell his hair, to taste his breath. And he _knows_ 2020 is an absolute shitshow for nearly everyone else (Arthur wouldn’t have _risen_ again otherwise), but Merlin can’t help it if he’s secretly having the very best year of his whole terribly long life. However, Arthur’s crisis mode is _not_ the time for his own selfish elation. “Budge over,” he says as he pats Arthur’s legs. “Let me help.”

Merlin expects Arthur to curl up to make room enough to sit, but instead he gets up and flips over, so that he can pillow his head on Merlin’s leg. “S’worse when you’re gone,” he grumbles, pouting. “Hate it when you’re gone.” 

“Well,” Merlin sighs, carding his fingers through Arthur’s hair, smoothing it out before ruffling it up again. “I’m here now.” 

Arthur’s breakdowns are an every-other-day occurrence lately, which Merlin supposes is actually somewhat of an improvement. When he _first_ came back, the cycles between coping and dissolving were far more rapid and chaotic. One moment Arthur would decide the K cup machine was absolutely ingenious and take the whole thing apart in attempts to ensure it wasn’t sorcery, and the next moment he’d unplug Merlin’s _entire_ desktop computer set up in a fit of tearful overwhelm because it was making “a noise.” Now, his stints of genuine coping last longer. He will spend a full day trying his hardest to puzzle through the world as it exists now, without getting so much as understandably frustrated. However, he’s also been known to stay in bed for hours at a time with noise canceling headphones on while Merlin rubs soothing circles into his back, so. It’s sort of a toss up, what the day will bring, but all things considered, he’s taking the whole mess that is 2020 quite well. 

Merlin cannot even _begin_ to be upset that it hasn’t been the smoothest of sailing since Arthur has returned. He is too busy pinching himself, too busy thanking the triple goddess, too busy just— _staring_ at Arthur, tracing over his familiar profile with his eyes, comparing it to the faded version he’s carried around in his mind’s eye for so long he'd begun to wonder if he was going mad. Reflexively, he shifts his fingers to the place where Arthur’s pulse thrums, and presses into it, counting the beats. _Alive, alive, alive,_ they say. 

“Did anything in particular get you down today?” Merlin asks, thumbing over the downturned corner of Arthur’s mouth. “Or just the usual pollution and societal collapse?” 

“The fucking television,” Arthur murmurs, shutting his eyes. “I turned it on. Thought maybe I could pick some modern English stuff up from it, like you said. But I just can’t _understand_ when people _talk_. It’s all constant flashing lights and nonsense. There was a—what do you call the bits that try to get you to buy shit?” he asks, gesturing loosely with his hand before clapping it down on Merlin’s knee. 

“Adverts?” Merlin supplies, grinning fondly down at Arthur. 

“Yes, those. There was one of those playing and I tried my _hardest_ to figure out what in the hell it was even trying to sell me and I just. Could. Not. Tell. Insurance, I guess, but what the _fuck_ is insurance Merlin?!” 

“A scam,” he offers with a shrug. “That’s all you need to know.” 

“ _Well_ whatever it was, it was nothing—nothing _concrete._ Nothing _real_ , I could hold or touch. And then I realized the whole _world_ is like that now. Made up of unreal, _intangible_ things I don’t even have words for. So I thought, I can’t even watch the fucking TV without falling apart, how am I going to save the world from a _virus_ and defund the fucking _police_ and overthrow all these _awful_ dictators and—”

“You’re going to take it one day at a time,” Merlin interrupts, fitting his fingers over Arthur’s warm, chapped mouth to silence him. Arthur deflates, letting out a long breath in a gust against Merlin’s hand. “ The TV can wait. Saving the _world_ can wait, at least until you’ve assimilated a bit more. Now. I’m going to order you some food that won’t make you sick,” Merlin promises, bending over to press a lingering kiss to Arthur’s sweaty temple. 

“I suppose that’s the only other thing that’s tolerable about this cursed, awful year,” Arthur mumbles beneath the pressure of Merlin’s lips. 

“What? That I take such good care of you?” Merlin asks as he pulls back and slides his phone from his hoodie pocket so he can put in a postmates order for some Pho. 

Arthur snorts. “ _No_. That you can just punch some magical code into a shiny box and then food appears at the door an hour later. S’brilliant.” 

Merlin rolls his eyes before pinching Arthur none too gently in the side. “Remember, you need _me_ for the magical code _and_ the shiny box in the first place. You can’t work the phone to save your life. I can always tell when you try, though, because my camera roll has like one hundred photo-bursts of the floor on it.” 

“God, _don’t_ ,” Arthur pleads, sitting up before crawling into Merlin’s lap and aggressively straddling him, hiding his face in the ditch of his neck before biting him punishingly. He's heavy, his weight crushing, and Merlin wants to be ground to dust beneath it. “Don’t talk like them. Don’t say ‘camera roll’ or ‘photo-burst’ or whatever the fuck. Just kiss me.” 

And then Merlin is smiling so hard his cheeks ache, eyes stinging with the sudden threat of tears. He holds Arthur, he smells his hair, he tastes his breath. “I’m not sure you deserve kisses, to be fair. Not when you don’t even rank me amongst the best things about this year. Surely I’m better than a McDonalds cheeseburger.” 

Arthur reels back to shoot Merlin a very critical look. “Oh _stop._ Merlin, you’re not the best thing about this year or this century, you’re the best thing about—I don’t know. About my whole life, not just this one but the last one, too. You’re the best thing about _me_. If you weren’t here I’d just say _fuck_ the world and all the people in it and off myself. You’re the only reason I’m even _trying_ to live up to this once and future king nonsense.”

He spits all this out as if its an insult, mouth twisted and one brow raised and Merlin’s heart _breaks_ over how much he loves him, at how much infernal _time_ he survived without Arthur Pendragon by his side. He shakes his head, and sneaks his palms under the hem of Arthur’s dirty white Primark shirt to touch skin. “Hm, you’re much nicer when you need me to punch a magical code into the shiny box.” 

“Shut up,” Arthur says before dipping in, taking Merlin’s chin in hand and aligning him so that he can press their mouths _together_ , rough and sweet. “I suppose _I_ must kiss you since _you_ won’t kiss me. I _suppose_ I must do _everything_ around here, save for the shiny box tasks.”

Eventually, Arthur lets him up long enough he can actually put the postmates order in, but as soon as Merlin’s done he drags him back down, pulling the weighted blanket over both of their bodies, trapping Merlin with a leg thrown over his hip. As _if_ Merlin would leave, as if he wants to be _anywhere_ but here. Every time he has to brave the world, put on his mask and get groceries or drop something off at the post office alone, he’s always half-terrified that when he returns to his flat, Arthur will be gone. There is still a part of Merlin who believes this is all too good to be true, or else an elaborate fantasy born from so many years of yearning, and wishing, and grieving. 

“I wish they’d just _stop_ ,” Arthur murmurs, startling Merlin from his reverie. His fingers scrape gently at the back of Merlin’s scalp as he settles closer, twines their legs.

“Wish what would stop?” Merlin asks. 

“The _cars._ There’s just. Constant car-sounds. It drives me insane.” 

Merlin pauses, strains his ears to listen, and sure enough, he can make out the insistent road of traffic in the background if he tries hard enough. “I don’t notice it,” he mumbles, mouthing open and wet and idle along Arthur’s jawline. “You get used to it eventually.” 

“I don’t want to get used to it,” Arthur whispers, making a fist in Merlin’s hoodie and trying to haul him closer, even though they’re flush and it's impossible. “I’d prefer if every car simply disappeared _._ ” 

“Pretend it’s the sea,” Merlin offers, fishing his phone out from between their bodies and opening youtube. He finds a video compilation of Medieval carols and puts it on at a low volume. “Here.” 

It calms Arthur down enough he stops squirming, at least. Merlin closes his eyes and listens alongside him, smoothing his hand down the back of his neck, over his shoulders, down the strong curve of this back, just— _feeling_ him, memorizing every jut of bone and swath of muscle and patch of smooth skin. He’s thumbing reverently up and down the column of Arthur’s throat when he feels the vibration of his voice against his own knuckles. “This makes me think of Camelot,” Arthur murmurs. “I mean—Camelot as I recall is.” 

“Me too,” Merlin admits. “The castle halls around yule. The smell of roast boar and plum pudding.” 

“You remember all that?” Arthur asks, smiling into Merlin’s hair. “Even after so much time?” 

Merlin kisses the jut of his Adam’s apple. “I remember everything.” 

Then they are quiet together for a moment, in the way only two men who have lost everything but each other can be quiet together. It is a still, healing quiet, and Merlin feels tears building in his throat at how wonderful it is to lose himself to the tide of it. He clutches at Arthur, inhales from his skin, digs his nails in. “I missed you,” he says in a small voice. And it is not _nearly_ enough to encapsulate the centuries-old _ache_ of living without Arthur—of thinking he’d lost everyone, that all his friends were dead, that everything he _knew_ was gone. It’s not enough, but Arthur trembles to hear it all the same, rubbing his face into Merlin’s hair, then his shoulder, mouth open wide and sucking on his throat before he finds his lips and licks them apart. They kiss desperately for a few seconds until Arthur pulls away to thumb roughly over Merlin’s mouth, mauling the shape of it. “Well,” he says in a low voice, thick with time to make up for. “I’m here, now.” 

And they kiss again, and Merlin forces a hand up between the drag of their bodies together to find Arthur’s throat, and press into the frantic thud of his pulse. _Alive, alive, alive,_ it says. 

—-


End file.
